'I'm the Biggest Man on Campus'

Late in the fall semester of 2011, as he guided his students into a discussion of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Julius Don Bailey broke down.

Bailey, a professor of philosophy at Wittenberg University, stands 5’11” and weighs 361 pounds. Two weeks prior, he told his students that he’d be taking a brief leave of absence, during which he planned to undergo gastric bypass surgery. He had high hopes that, by helping him shed weight, the procedure would “combine what I’ve got intellectually with more of a social life.”

But once his doctors opened him up, they determined that they couldn’t go through with the operation: Bailey had too much scar tissue from two previous surgical procedures. The professor returned to Wittenberg, still sore from his surgical scar, with crushed hopes. “I felt ugly, despondent, and useless as a 40-year-old unmarried fat man,” he says.

As he stood before his class, the famous opening lines of Dostoyevsky’s Notes From Underground stopped him cold: “I am a sick man. I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man.” Bailey could no longer mask his pain. His body slumped, and he leaned on his desk for support. He retreated from his students, sat down, and paused to catch himself.

When a female student started to cry, he snapped back into focus. “Don’t feel sorry for me,” he told her. “Part of the existential process is undergoing a crisis when the self confronts the self, and you have to wrestle with the ugliness of your human spirit.”

“I opened up to my students,” he now says, “because I wanted them to see just how dark the human soul can get. But I also wanted to lift them up, to get them to be better intellectually and socially.”

Bailey is by no means alone. Overweight professors across academe describe similar battles to achieve self-acceptance, full inclusion in academic life, and genuine respect from students and colleagues. Some struggle daily to navigate campus spaces that don’t comfortably accommodate their size. Some stand in front of classrooms and wonder whether their bodies influence how students perceive their minds. Some say they have trouble adhering to exercise plans or healthy eating habits because their jobs come with lots of research and little structure.

Yet larger professors often grapple with these concerns in isolation and silence. On a national level, discussions of obesity have become increasingly common—and, at times, increasingly contentious. But many fat professors, along with allies in the emerging field of fat studies, feel that colleges and universities have yet to hold productive conversations on the topic, especially when it comes to “fat shaming” and how size influences hiring, tenure, and promotion decisions.

“The situation for fat academics has worsened as our national discourse about obesity has ramped up,” says Christina Fisanick, an associate professor of English at California University of Pennsylvania.

Fisanick has tracked the discourse for some time, in part because she herself has struggled with obesity. (Due to a binge-eating disorder, her weight has risen as high as 353 pounds; it’s now down to 228.) Writing in 2007 for Feminist Teacher, she pointed out that the few fat professors depicted on film are treated farcically: Think of Sherman Klump in Eddie Murphy’s remake of The Nutty Professor, for example, or the unnamed (but Colonel Sandersesque) biology professor played by Robert Kokol in Adam Sandler’s The Waterboy. These images, according to Fisanick, affect students’, professors’, and administrators’ expectations of what a scholar should look like.

Fisanick’s piece also hinted at a question that many fat academics have found themselves asking: Will they face bias in job interviews or in tenure and promotion decisions? There’s no data to prove size discrimination in academia, according to representatives of the National Association for the Advancement of Fat Acceptance, an advocacy organization, but there’s no reason to believe that academe is immune, either.

In the meantime, fat-studies scholars trade anecdotes. Linda Bacon, a nutrition professor at the City College of San Francisco and author of Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight, shares one, from a search committee she served on. One overweight candidate applied for the position. She was at least as qualified as the other applicants, Bacon says, but she didn’t get the job.

“When it came time to discuss the lone fat candidate, one of my colleagues dismissed her by saying, ‘Well, she really isn’t the role model for someone who eats nutritiously, is she?’” Bacon recalls. “I was horrified. What it reinforced for me was that had this candidate had been up against a thinner woman similar in other aspects, or even with lesser qualifications, the thinner person would have gotten the job just by virtue of what she weighed.”

When Bacon attends NAAFA’s conference, an annual gathering place for fat people, she says she’s usually the only thin person in attendance. She says a good number of the attendees are academics.

“I’m struck by how many people in the room have Ph.D.’s, how many of them are incredibly brilliant, but they are underemployed and can’t get tenure-track positions,” Bacon says. “It’s got to be because they are fat. But how do you prove any of this stuff?”

That may always prove to be a difficult assignment. But in the meantime, scholars say that it’s time to have more candid conversations about fat professors—and about the difficulties they face on campus and beyond. We spoke with three professors, including Bailey and Fisanick, who described the myriad ways in which their weight has altered their scholarly lives. Click through below to read their stories.

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"“I’m struck by how many people in the room have Ph.D.’s, how many of them are incredibly brilliant, but they are underemployed and can’t get tenure-track positions,” Bacon says. “It’s got to be because they are fat. But how do you prove any of this stuff?” -"

Comments like Bacon's undermine efforts to gain respect for the obese. America is full of brilliant, underemployed PhD holders of all shapes. The Chronicle has even written about the epidemic: http://chronicle.com/article/From-Graduate-School-to/131795/. Hopefully next time Vitae can find professors who actually understand the current state of academic (under)employment and won't make such silly comments.

Anon Ymous

over 1 year ago

@Anon Ymous, why does that comment undermine efforts to gain respect? Linda Bacon teaches. She knows, as we all do, that there's a glut of Ph.D.s and it's hard to get tenure track jobs. But she ALSO knows, as an increasingly large amount of research shows, that obese people face layers of discrimination in the workplace, from exactly the type of interview discrimination described in the story to lower pay and fewer promotions because of the way fat people are stereotyped. It stands to reason those forces are at work in academia (as the article points out, there's no reason to believe they're not), so when Linda goes to NAAFA and sees rooms full of highly educated, underemployed people, she's justified in suspecting there may be more than just a generally bad job market to blame.

Michele Doney

over 1 year ago

Wow... as an obese masters student applying to phd programs with the goal of teaching and counseling...this has made questions I have been asking more acute. I am a 300 pound counselor who also teaches yoga. I have confronted the mental dragons born of a life of obesity (perceived and later actual), experiencing the most truth when trying too get into a yoga teaching certification program. I am thankful for this article and the voice it has... it made me sign up on vitae!

Jenifer Head

over 1 year ago

Anyone who believes that academics are not burdened by the same social prejudices as other workers are simply deluding themselves. When it comes to physical appearance and social skills, academia is as basic as a high school, with all the relevant cliques.

Maureen Bemko

over 1 year ago

Great series of articles. Thanks to all for openly sharing your stories.

Kim Doan

over 1 year ago

I have researched and written articles on workplace bullying. Obese individuals are frequently the target of bullies and subject to "mobbing" (group bullying). Being obese is challenging enough without having to deal with bullying as well. The academic setting ignores both, whereas some companies, and lately football teams, have been attempting to address the problem of workplace bullying.

Robert Killoren

over 1 year ago

Over at our blog Conditionally Accepted (conditionallyaccepted.com), we have had a number of posts discussing fatphobia, fat experiences, and teaching about fat in the classroom. If you're interested in learning more, I would recommend you check out some of our posts!

Dr. Bailey is my friend and this is an outstanding article, I just hope it does not overshadow the fact that he has produced two exciting books combining philosophy and hip hop. His work brings relevance to an academic discipline that is on life-support.

David Evans

over 1 year ago

I am a 150 kg bundle of fun, PhD and first generation graduate. The bias and bullying started for me in primary school. It never really abated but ceased to be physical when I reached university. My tormentors were always smaller than me so recourse to established authority on the matter was futile. I learnt the valuable lesson that established authority would not help me. It never has. I am also one of those unfortunates that looks as thick as a brick. I take advantage of that when dealing with bureaucrats, offices, banks and salesmen. Being big as well as stupid-looking is just something you have to live with but it is a distinct disadvantage in academia.Lecture theatres and tutorial rooms with those stupid side armed writing board chairs are a real nuisance. I do not fit. I also have to be careful about crushing chairs. At University of Western Sydney I crushed 4 office chairs in 3 years before they bought a special "Lord of the Universe" chair for me (I bundled it into my car and ran off with it when my contract ran out). Visiting one university in Thailand I crushed 2 chairs in one day.Whether the elevator works or not is a critical matter.I can just fit into a standard airline seat but it is very tight. The airline problem is legroom and that has nothing to do with my girth.